


That World Does Not Exist

by holyfant



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/F, Gen, Trojan War, Tumblr Prompt, women supporting each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 07:20:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4212912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holyfant/pseuds/holyfant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Let's speak of other things,” Helen says, “not of the darkness outside.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	That World Does Not Exist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pasiphile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pasiphile/gifts).



> For pasiphile's prompt on tumblr: "can i humbly request anything involving Cassandra and/or Helen?" c:
> 
> Unbeta'ed.

The company of men is exhausting these days, in more ways than one.

 

She is a daughter of kings and her station remains the same, even if outside the walls her brothers are dying, even if inside the walls her father has shut himself away and will take no food. She could still tell any guard in the hallways to open up his bowels for her with his sword and he would be bound by oath to do it. (Sometimes she is tempted, and this – scares her.)

 

Despite all this, even the lowliest of men – her servants, her slaves – treat her with a casual derision when she speaks. She has to appreciate the subtlety with which Apollo has cursed her: she is no more than a woman when she speaks now, stripped of birth, and his curse has removed the rules that the men below her station were beholden to. Now they treat her as they would any woman: with not even the pretense of attention to her words.

 

It's why she seeks out women, these days. She can only take so much of her sisters; most of them have husbands perishing on the battlefield, and _she_ _knows_ which of them will die that day, and how long it will take, and which name will be on their lips. She has given up trying to tell her sisters, but the heavy knowledge of it burns in her throat, in her heart, and often she has to flee their conversations about the children and the dresses and the hair.

 

Often, she sits with the slave girls. Even if they, too, laugh at her when she tells them about the future, at least their faces are soft and the laughter good-natured. At least they still listen to her patiently, even if they disbelieve her. In return, she tries to listen to them, and is sometimes ashamed to think that before the curse she never would have bothered.

 

-

 

There is one other who is an outcast, though different. One other who avoids the women's wing.

 

Sometimes Cassandra catches her eye when they pass each other in a hallway, and she would like to ask how it is, what home means now that it's so far away, and if there are any regrets.

 

But she already knows, and she can't bear to hear Helen lie about it.

 

-

 

Still, when Cassandra knows with the bone-chilling calm certainty of her visions how Paris will die, she seeks her beautiful sister-in-law out. Helen's quarters are sparse. Cassandra has heard about the Spartan way: how even its kings and queens live by the rule that you must be able to carry all you own on your body. She wonders if that is why Helen's room feels like a place of passing rather than a personal space, or if it is because Helen had to leave her court without any of her belongings.

 

“Sister,” Helen says, and when she smiles, the room is suddenly like home. “What can I do for you?”

 

There is nothing Cassandra can do but tell Helen what she knows. It's part of the curse, this compulsion to tell, even though she knows what the response will be. Helen listens carefully, and then smiles faintly. She _is_ beautiful, Cassandra thinks, she is beautiful because she is strange to all, a vision, unmelted ice glimpsed from afar. The white-blond hair, the bright eyes. She is lovely in her suffering, the leanness of grief and guilt just as fitting on her frame as the fresh plumpness that rounded her body when Paris brought her to Troy. The ladies of Troy started wearing their hair like Helen only days after she arrived, even while gossiping snidely about her.

 

Cassandra knows that that is what beauty is. Finding grace in pain, and being alone because of it. Men like to see their women carrying their fate with elegance and not a complaint. And who decides what beauty is, if not men?

 

“Surely you are mistaken, Cassandra,” Helen says lightly after Cassandra finishes, and rises with a tinkling of bracelets. She is radiant, and she will die. Cassandra blinks back treacherous tears. The disappointment stings anew every time. Apollo is careful with his spite.

 

“Let's speak of other things,” Helen says, “not of the darkness outside.”

 

“Is there anything else to talk about?” Cassandra asks.

 

Helen smiles. “We may be pawns in this game, but we still have our voices. We shouldn't waste them on what men are doing.”

 

“Do you think yourself a pawn?” Cassandra asks carefully, and then after some deliberation, dares: “Did you not choose to come here?”

 

Helen's smile brightens. “What choice did I have, truly?” She breezes past Cassandra to fix a crooked picture on the wall. Her perfume is light and fresh, like the air before dawn. Cassandra knows of Helen's influence, of how looking at her makes limbs loose and mouths slack. She can almost – almost – understand why anyone would want to own anyone else when she looks at Helen. This is a woman made to be possessed, except…

 

“The options you had were dreadful,” Cassandra says. “But you chose the one that gave you the most happiness of the two.”

 

Helen pauses, and slowly sinks back down on her bed. “Do you truly think so?”

 

“Paris loves you,” Cassandra says simply.

 

“So did Menelaos,” Helen says, “in his way.”

 

“His way was cruel and harsh.”

 

Helen sighs. “So is Paris's,” she finally says, quietly. “Menelaos never had much power to hurt me. Paris does. It's a dangerous thing, happiness. To be dependent on another that way.” She smiles a little. “Paris means well. I suppose that's the difference.”

 

“Maybe there will one day be a world where women can have their own happiness, and no one – not men, not women, not anyone – can take it away,” Cassandra says. She knows the future, but it is never that easy.

 

“Maybe,” Helen says. “But I don't think that world exists today.”

 

They're quiet for a moment.

 

“It can exist for a moment, here,” Cassandra says softly, and sets herself down next to Helen. Her sister-in-law gives her a quizzical, wary look. “Will you tell me about your home?”

 

Helen isn't smiling anymore when she looks at Cassandra. For a moment, there is nothing to be read in her light eyes. She is empty. So many have emptied her. Cassandra, on an impulse, leans in and presses a kiss to Helen's jaw.

 

“Do you really want me to?” Helen asks, and then touches a finger to the spot where Cassandra kissed her, as though testing it.

 

“Yes,” Cassandra says.

 


End file.
